How to Compress Pictures in Excel

Generally, Microsoft Office Excel is a programme mainly used to perform certain mathematical functions on data. However, it is also possible to resize a picture in Excel as well. Although the resizing options are very limited, the option is still available and can come in handy if you do not have a specialised picture editing programme installed on your computer. Compressing a picture in Excel would require only a few mouse clicks. Here is what you need to do if you are planning to compress a picture in Microsoft Office Excel.

Instructions

1

Launch Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and wait shortly for the programme to load completely. Click the tab labelled ‘Insert’ and then click ‘Picture’ from in the ‘Illustrations’ section. Browse to the picture you want to resize in Excel, click the icon of the picture and then click the button labelled ‘Insert’ on the ‘Insert Picture’ dialogue box.

2

The picture you select will be added to Excel sheet you are working on. White sizing handles around the pictures perimeter are an indication that the picture has been selected and you can proceed to resizing it.

3

Click the sub-tab labelled ‘Format’ under the tab labelled ‘Picture Tools’. This is where you will see all the tools which you can use to make changes to the picture which you just opened in Excel.

4

Under the ‘Format’ tab, there will be a section labelled ‘Adjust’ on the left hand side of the Excel window. Click the button labelled ‘Compress Pictures’ in the ‘Adjust’ section. Excel will immediately pop up a dialogue box labelled ‘Compress Pictures’.

5

Check the box labelled ‘Apply to selected pictures only’. This will prevent Excel from resizing any other pictures that you may have opened in the Excel sheet.

6

Click the button labelled ‘Options’. A dialogue box labelled ‘Compression Settings’ will pop up on the screen. It will have two sections; ‘Compression options’ and ‘Target output’.

7

In the ‘Compression options’ section of the ‘Compression Settings’ dialogue box, you will be able to if you want Excel to perform basic compression when you save the Excel file. You also opt to automatically delete cropped areas of the picture. Check one or both of the boxes or leave both of the boxes unchecked.

8

In the ‘Target output’ section of the ‘Compression Settings’ dialogue box, you can choose the size of the compressed picture, depending on the purpose for which you want to use the compressed picture. If you want to email the picture for instance, Excel will resize picture 220 ppi (Pixels per Inch). Make the desired choice.

9

Click the button labelled ‘OK’ to close the ‘Compression Settings’ dialogue box and then click the button labelled ‘OK’ on the ‘Compress Pictures’ dialogue box.